In defiance of expectations, I’m actually writing this update thingy. And this week it’s at bungie.org, because I love those guys. At some point I’m going to have to decide on a permanent home for these dispatches. Actually I have one in mind already, but I can't tell you what it is yet. :-)

- Did I mention last time that we’re interviewing like mad? It’s still happening.

- We’ve been looking at the floor plans for our new space, and things are starting to come together. Amusingly, just like the last time we moved, we completely forgot to allocate any space for a storage closet. Trying to rectify that. Lots of windows in our new space though.

- We’re coming up on the end of a major engine rewrite. We’re now very close to having the indoor areas kick as much ass as the outdoor areas, and consequently the game will be split more evenly between them (previously the outdoor stuff was going to seriously outweigh the indoor stuff). Whether you’re outside or under a roof, in Halo things will look better than anything else out there.

- Jason is splitting his time between AI work and story work with Jaime and John. The AI stuff is still in the planning stages, but it should be very cool. The aim is to make it the most fun AI to play against (or play with, if it’s on your side).

- There’s also a new rasterizer in the works so we can take advantage of all the cool Xbox features. "Per-pixel everything," said Chucky, with a characteristically depraved grin.

- By the way, we’re all very disappointed that none of you took the time to post a "Happy Birthday Chucky" message even though we made it a news item on www.bungie.net. Chucky’s doing well, considering – right now we’re much more concerned about Jason’s habit of dumping his lunch on himself – but we were hoping for a little support from you guys.

- Rob assures me that my personal favorite tool of destruction, the mysterious "wall-hugging hippo," still exists. Thus we end on a high note. :-)